China's Vertical Multilateralism and the Global South

This book provides an in-depth analysis of China-led multilateralism and decodes China’s narratives, and political and business practices, both from theoretical and practical dimensions.

Introducing the mechanisms that govern China-led multilateral formats in what China sees as the Global South, the study offers a comparative analysis and checks whether China uses a one-size-fits-all strategy towards the selected case study formats and adopts a more differentiated regional approach. The case studies cover the following China-led multilateral formats: China-ASEAN, Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), China-Central and Eastern Europe, and China-CELAC. The authors introduce four primary practices of China’s management of relations within these platforms: executing discursive power, cultivating elite diplomacy, influencing public opinion, and navigating economic interactions to illustrate the bilateral and informal nature of China-led multilateralism practices. They argue that the bilateral approach is driven by China’s will to keep its paramount position within the formats and its pursuit to exploit the divisions among countries in these formats. Moreover, China’s relations with the Global South community are governed by informal networks that give the impression of non-interference and position China as the principal power due to these relationships’ inherent asymmetry. Cognizant of bilateral and informal drivers of China’s multilateral practices, the book compares China’s relations with selected case studies of countries under the multilateral umbrella: Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Kenya, Poland, Serbia, South Africa and Thailand. It considers the growing tensions between China and the West surrounding the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the centralisation of power in China and the Russian war in Ukraine.

Shedding light on China's policies and practices on bilateral and multilateral levels, this book will be of interest to researchers studying International Relations, Asian Politics, the politics of the Global South and Chinese Studies.

Dominik Mierzejewski is Associate Professor at the University of Łódź, where he leads the Department of Asian Studies and the Centre for Asian Affairs (think-tank), specialising in China’s political discourse, local China and China’s international behaviours. Mierzejewski studied at Shanghai International Studies University and was a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of China's Provinces and the Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge, 2021) and has published in journals such as Asian Affairs and the Journal of Contemporary China. He serves as a principal investigator in grants supported by the Polish National Science Centre and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Poland.

Jarosław Jura is Assistant Professor at Lazarski University in Warsaw, specialising in China–Africa relations, Chinese soft power and the global projection of Chinese influence. He has published on FDI spillovers, media representations and political discourse in journals such as African Affairs and Journal of Contemporary China. He has conducted field research on China’s presence in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Jura has contributed to research projects funded by the Polish National Science Centre, including studies on China’s vertical multilateralism in the Global South, spillover effects of Chinese FDI in Africa and China’s diplomacy at the UN.

Bartosz Kowalski is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies of the University of Łódź, Poland. His research explores China’s foreign policy, particularly its engagement with Central and Eastern Europe and the Global South. He has published widely on China’s regional diplomacy in Central and Eastern Europe and Chinese ideological narratives. His most recenct book is Relacyjność w polityce Chin wobec Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej: Przypadek Czech (2024).

Mario Esteban is Full Professor and Director of the Centre for East Asian Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He is also Senior Fellow at the Elcano Royal Institute. He was the president of the Spanish Association for East Asian Studies (2020-2024), a visiting professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University and a visiting researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Chengchi National University. His most recent books are Introducción a la China actual (2024) and China and International Norms: Evidence from the Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge, 2023).